Albums

Singles & EPs

About Hand Habits

Meg Duffy began building a reputation as a session musician and touring guitarist for singer/songwriters including Kevin Morby while developing her own songwriting project, Hand Habits. Begun as a home-recorded solo venture, her dreamy, delicately textured guitar songs first surfaced on a split EP in 2014. Hand Habits had expanded into a band by the arrival of its second album, 2019's Placeholder.

A native of upstate New York based in Los Angeles, Duffy's first release as Hand Habits was the split EP Small Shifts/Living with Abbreviation with the band Peg. It was released on Eschatone Records in early 2014. Duffy spent several months over the next couple of years backing West Coast-based songwriters Kevin Morby and Mega Bog (Erin Birgy) on tour. She also played guitar on albums by Weyes Blood and Amber Arcades that saw release in 2016. Later that year, Hand Habits signed with the Woodsist label, home of albums by Morby, Little Wings, and Real Estate, to name a few. Titled Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void), her self-produced debut arrived on the label in early 2017. That year, she also contributed slide guitar to the War on Drugs' album A Deeper Understanding and performed multiple instruments on Morby's City Music.

Defining the project as a group instead of a solo alias, Hand Habits returned in 2019 with a fuller but still intimate sound on Placeholder, issued on Saddle Creek Records. Her other credits that year included playing electric guitar on William Tyler's Goes West, an album that also featured Bill Frisell. ~ Marcy Donelson